Better yet, for one full hour he was able to maintain the contest with his thirty-two small guns against sixty-four large ones. He was wounded, but he refused to allow his men to carry him below, and while he was thus directing the battle from the quarter-deck, the powder in the _Randolph’s_ magazine was in some way fired, and the ship was literally blown out of the water. Pieces of the wreck, in flames, fell on the _Yarmouth_, while an American ensign, rolled up ready to be sent aloft, in case the one flying should be shot away, fell, unsinged, upon her forecastle. It was at 10 o’clock on the morning of March 7, 1778, that this disaster occurred. The _Randolph_ had on board 315 men at the time. The people of the _Yarmouth_ supposed that all hands had perished, and made sail after the rest of the Yankee squadron, though without success. On March 12th the _Yarmouth_ happened back over the very water where the fight had taken place, and there found a piece of the _Randolph_ floating about with four seamen upon it, who were, of course, picked up. Captain Vincent of the _Yarmouth_ reported five men killed and twelve wounded. The little brig _Cabot_, of fourteen guns, that made such a brave fight in the first cruise of the first squadron, came to grief on the coast of Nova Scotia. She was in command of Capt. Joseph Olney. The British frigate _Milford_, with which John Paul Jones had had so much fun, happened along, and as the _Cabot_ was even slower than she, Captain Olney ran her ashore to keep her from the enemy. The crew barely had time to get ashore, but they fired the _Cabot_ before leaving. Once on shore, they were, of course, afoot and friendless in the enemy’s country, but Captain Olney and his men captured a schooner and returned home in her. This occurred in March, 1777. On April 9th, following, Capt. Dudley Saltonstall, in the _Trumbull_ of twenty-eight guns, captured two British transports off New York harbor that were laden with military stores for the British army, and so more than retrieved the loss of the _Cabot_. The _Trumbull_ lost seven killed and eight wounded. The only record of the loss on the transports says that “the enemy suffered severely.” The year 1777 was noted for the building of the first American submarine torpedo boat. David Bushnell, of Saybrook, Connecticut (he moved to Peekskill, New York, later), a most ingenious mechanical engineer, devised a turtle-shaped cask large enough to hold a man and carry a torpedo containing 150 pounds of powder, with mechanism to fasten it to the wooden bottom of a ship and to fire it when so fastened. Because this was the first attempt to use a submarine vessel for the purposes of war, and because Bushnell’s invention, fearsome as it was, is not even yet developed to anything like the degree of which it is capable, the description which he wrote of the thing is well worth giving in full, as follows: